Volume 22, Number 1
1998

The Greater Digital Crisis

Letter to the Editor, Washington
Post

January 21, 1998

The Jan. 12 Federal Page article on the Defense Department's
year-2000 problem discusses serious issues affecting our
computer-dependent government. But the nation also faces a second
digitally based crisis that might, in time, do great harm.

We run the risk that digital information will disappear. Indeed,
portions of it already have become inaccessible. Either the media
on which the information is stored are disintegrating, or the
computer hardware and software needed to retrieve it from obsolete
digital formats no longer exist. The extent of the problem will
emerge as more and more records are requested for retrieval and
cannot be read. There are already documented examples of this, and
government and industry representatives are concerned about the
potential large-scale consequences.

When President Clinton completes his second term, his
administration will send some 8 million electronic files to the
National Archives. But those files are only a small fraction of the
information the government will have generated during his years in
office. Given the problems now surfacing as existing digital files
are retrieved, the prospect of major losses to come grows
increasingly likely.

Military files, including POW and MIA data from the Vietnam War,
were nearly lost forever because of errors and omissions contained
in the original digital records. Ten to twenty percent of vital
data tapes from the Viking Mars mission have significant errors
because magnetic tape is too susceptible to degradation to serve as
an archival storage medium.

Research conducted by the National Media Lab, part of the
National Technology Alliance--a consortium of government, industry
and educational institutions that seeks to leverage commercial
information technology for government users--has shown that magnetic
tapes, disks, and optical CD-ROMs have relatively short lives and,
therefore, questionable value as preservation media. The findings
reveal that, at room temperature, top-quality data VHS tape becomes
unreliable after 10 years, and average-quality CD-ROMs are
unreliable after only five years. Compare those figures with a life
of more than 100 years for archival-quality microfilm and paper.
Current digital media are plainly unacceptable for long-term
preservation.

Finding a late-model computer to read a 5.25-inch floppy disk--a
format common only a few years ago--or the software to translate
WordPerfect 4.0 is practically impossible. On government and
industry levels, the problem is magnified: old Dectape and UNIVAC
drives, which recorded vast amounts of government data, are long
retired, and programs like FORTRAN II are historical
curiosities.

The data stored by these machines in now-obsolete formats are
virtually inaccessible. The year-2000 problem concerns only
obsolete formats for storing dates. It is merely a snapshot of the
greater digital crisis that puts future access to important
government, business, and cultural data in such jeopardy.

Librarians and archivists have long worried that hardware and
software manufacturers show more interest in discovering new
technology than in preserving today's data. It is important for
federal, state and local governments to set digital storage
standards that will ensure future access. If private industries
hope to sell their wares to governments, they will need to comply
with those standards. And all of us will benefit.

Deanna B. Marcum
President
Council on Library and Information Resources

[Note: This letter to the Post was reprinted in the
March/April 1998 CLIR Issues.]